Caroline PhillipsMark Carney and Diana Carney at the U.S. Embassy's Fourth of July Celebration held Monday, July 4, 2011.

The wife of outgoing Bank of
Canada governor Mark Carney has caught the attention of the British
press as an “eco-warrior” who “has expressed sympathy with the
anti-banking Occupy movement.”
After news broke on Monday that Mr. Carney is headed for the Bank of England, London’s The Daily Telegraph
ran a story under the headline “New Bank of England Governor Mark
Carney’s wife: an eco-warrior who says banks are rotten,” pulling from
articles she has written for her eco-conscious website and for Canada’s
own iPolitics as recently as Nov. 19.

The Daily TelegraphThe Telegraph piece in question

In the iPolitics piece, Diana Carney — the vice-president of a
liberal think-tank — deemed income inequality the “defining issue of our
time” and said she believes people “fear that the institutions that
underpin our country and the global system are either threatened, rotten
or inadequate to face down the challenges of the future.”

Mr. Carney, who is widely esteemed in the economics community and who
steered Canada’s monetary policy ship since February 2008, is slated to
take the helm at one of the most powerful central banks in the world
when he assumes the British governorship next year. And the dynamic
between husband and wife — one a former investment banker slated to
regulate Britain’s banks and be a leader in the global marketplace, the
other an anti-consumption activist concerned by the “visibility and
excess of the top 0.1 per cent” — was not lost on the Telegraph.

“[Ms. Carney] has described the notion that humans should halt all
consumption to save the environment as a ‘good point’ but ‘very hard
given the way our societies function,’ and has also lamented the
‘relentless exhortations to buy and the fact that much of our sense of
self is tied up in our possessions,’” the London paper reported.

It went on to describe the couple’s lifestyle, reporting that they
live in a $1.3-million home in Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park, “one of the
richest enclaves where their neighbours include ambassadors and
executives” and even adding that “records suggest that they made
[$151,000] of improvements in 2009.”

The paper also pointed out that Ms. Carney urges readers of her
ecoproductsthatwork.com blog to live frugally. “Describing herself as a
‘farmer’s daughter’ she wears recycled vegan shoes, describes
environmentally-friendly ways to tackle head lice and recommends
‘gardening with cow poo.’”

On her site, she discusses her use of natural “crystal deodorant,”
cutting “forlorn sweaters up to make mittens” and how she hoards “old
shoeboxes in my basement in the hopes of identifying future uses.”
In the Frequently Asked Questions portion of the blog, Ms. Carney
responds to the question “If we want to help the environment, shouldn’t
we just stop consuming altogether?” with this: “Fortunately, it has been
repeatedly shown that having more stuff does not make us happy, so we
should be able to make that step.”

The couple met in 1991 when both were studying at the University of Oxford in England, according to a 2011 Readers’ Digest,
which said Ms. Carney was then “Diana Fox, a British economist
specializing in Third World development.” They eventually made their way
to Toronto and “after a few years on Bay Street — a culture, [Mr.
Carney] claims, that was ultimately too materialistic for his liking —
he caught the eye of David Dodge, then Bank of Canada governor,” the
digest reported.

Mr. Carney became the bank’s deputy governor in 2003, and after 10
years at Canada’s central institution, he is slated to take up the helm
in Britain in July 2013.National Postkcarlson@nationalpost.com@kblazecarlson